Thursday, November 13, 2008

As time goes on, people are always changing. They change their ways of dressing, taste of food, their mind and their culture. When old thinking can’t follow the footstep of modern society, we seek changes.

Tainan Girl’s Senior High is widely considered as an open-minded school. As the students of such a school, we are taught to be responsible to ourselves, not to parents and teachers. The school provides all kinds of education. We choose what we want to learn and study happily. However, the only thing that makes us upset is the matter of uniform.

Unlike earlier students, we don’t need to wear short hair, but we still can’t dye our hair freely. We are still asked to wear school uniforms, which lead to a lot of annoying problems. First, there’s a specific rule of socks. The color of the socks can only be black and white. Plus, it should be long enough to cover our ankles but shorter than our knees. Second, we can’t wear other colors of shoes, except black and white. Third, we are only allowed to dress in black skirts during passing the school gate. School shorts are considered informal. If we break the rule, the punishment is to mod the floor or to clean the bike park during the lunchtime.

In a democratic country, how can schools limit students’ ways of dressing? The rule seems non-sense and ridiculous in such a school, which receives a lot of admiration of students’ freedom. We ask for changes. However, those high-rise teachers never change their attitude. They gave us weak reason for those clothes rules, such as “you should learn to follow the school rule” or “it looks tidier when everybody wears the same”. Actually, the only reason they make us to wear so is they think that “students should be like students” (by wearing uniforms).

The worst thing is that we can’t even be free when we’re not at school. The public has a lot of opinions of our wearing. If our socks are too short, it will be considered that we are not dignified enough. If a girl has special hairstyle, it seems that she spends more time on her appearance not her homework in a public aspect. These aren’t funny jokes. We are often told that a lot of citizens phoned the school and asked students to wear formally.

Besides the schools, the society keeps too high of expectation of students. They want us to act as the image of students in their mind. We have to be not only lovely, polite, but also well-wearing. However, we are unlike early students at all. We have new ideas and receive new education. Uniform is actually a symbol of old tradition that should be eliminated. We seek changes! We need new clothes!